Page 94 of Merry Me
“I know,” I whispered. Shame crawled up my throat, bitter and hot. “But I thought…if I let myself need you that much, and it didn’t work…” I trailed off, eyes stinging. “I wouldn’t recover.”
He nodded slowly. “So you left before it could break.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The truth sat between us, a living, breathing thing. Heavy. Real.
He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, staring into the fire. “I used to think…if I just became successful enough, you’d come back. That if I did somethingbigenough, you’d regret letting go.”
I jerked my head toward him, startled by the rawness in his voice. “Easton…”
“I don’t mean it to guilt-trip you,” he said. “I know we were just kids. But that didn’t make what I felt any less real.”
I swallowed, my fingers tightening around the melting chocolate in my hand. “It was real for me, too,” I said hoarsely. “It wassoreal. That was part of the problem.”
He turned toward me again. “So…do you regret it?”
He’d already laid everything bare—his hurt, his hope, the ache he’d carried alone. I owed him the real answer. Not a deflection. Not a half-truth. The real one.
So I gave it to him.
I stared at the fire, my voice barely above a whisper. “Yes.”
He blinked.
“Not because it wasn’t the choice I thought I had to make,” I said quickly. “I believed it was right at the time. But I still missedyou. Every year. Every birthday. Every time I saw a movie trailer with your name on it and thought,He’s still him.”
He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me like I’d cracked open a part of myself he thought he’d never see again.
“And then I buried it,” I admitted. “Because if I let myself regret it too much, I’d have to face what it cost me. And I wasn’t brave enough to do that.”
The fire hissed. Someone laughed somewhere to my left, completely unaware the ground beneath my feet was shifting like sand.
Easton’s eyes were soft, searching, his thumb brushing against the side of his hot cocoa cup like he needed something to ground him. And I knew I wasn’t the only one remembering how it felt to be us, back then. Two kids—one already sure, the other too scared to believe it could last.
I turned slightly to face him more fully, my voice quieter, but more sure. “Can I ask you something now?”
He looked over at me, that gentle steadiness in his eyes. “Anything.”
“If you felt all of that,” I said slowly, heart thudding in my chest. “Why didn’t you come after me?”
He didn’t flinch. His jaw tensed, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. They stayed steady, steady and deep, the way they used to when he was trying to make sure I really heard him.
“I did,” he said quietly.
I stared at him, stunned, the crackle of the fire suddenly too loud in my ears. “You—what?”
“I came back the next morning,” he continued. “Before I left for L.A. I hadn’t even finished packing. I just got in the car and drove to your house. I had no plan. Just this desperate need to see you…to convince you to change your mind.”
My breath caught. I felt it like a snag in my chest—sharp and sudden, unraveling everything I thought I knew about that day. “I didn’t know that.”
“I just couldn’t breathe knowing you were really gone.” Helooked down at his hands, flexing them slightly like he was still holding the steering wheel, still feeling the tremor in his fingers. “The whole drive, it felt like my chest was too tight. Like if I didn’t see you, I’d lose something I wouldn’t get back.”
I stared at him, frozen in the space between then and now.
“But I didn’t make it past the front step,” he said quietly. “MeMaw opened the door before I could even knock—and then she stepped outside like she’d been waiting for me all night.”
The image hit me like a memory half remembered: I could picture her perfectly—arms crossed, wearing that leopard-print robe she always packed when she spent the night, standing at the door like some kind of Southern oracle who already knew the ending and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.
A lump rose in my throat. “She didn’t tell me.”
